Hugh’s Hermeneutics

“First of all, it ought to be known that Sacred Scripture has three ways of conveying meaning–namely, history, allegory, and tropology….It is necessary, therefore, so to handle the Sacred Scripture that we do not try to find history everywhere, nor allegory everywhere, nor tropology everywhere but rather that we assign individual things fittingly in their own places, as reason demands.  Often, however, in one and the same literal context, all may be found together, as when a truth of history both hints at some mystical meaning by way of allegory, and equally shows by way of tropology how we ought to behave.”     Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, Bk 5, Chap. 2.